Rosalia Holt, 1922-2010

Yoga pioneer taught longest-running class in Chicago

As chair of women's fellowship at Trinity United Church of Christ in the late 1960s, Rosalia Holt felt many female parishioners were too stressed.

Mrs. Holt started researching stress-reduction methods and discovered yoga. After studying and seeking out lessons, Mrs. Holt taught parishioners their first poses and started the South Side church's yoga ministry.

Since then, Trinity's yoga ministry has grown to include more than 60 members, both men and women, and is known as the longest-running yoga class in Chicago. Mrs. Holt became one of the city's finest yoga instructors, teaching at Trinity, her home studio and leading yoga retreats.

"Rosalia was a part of thousands of people's lives," said her daughter Yvette Holt. "Rosalia's yoga family is more than poses and postures. This was her life, her social circle … and a source of great joy for her.

Mrs. Holt, 87, who taught yoga for more than 40 years, died Sunday, Aug. 29, at Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park due to complications from a stroke, her daughter said.

She was born in St. Louis but raised in Chicago, attending Burke Elementary School and DuSable High School.

At Wentworth Gardens on Chicago's South Side, where she lived, Mrs. Holt began her focus on physical health by organizing children's activities. She opened her own library from donated books in the Wentworth Gardens complex and encouraged the children to read. Later, she became a docent at the Harold Washington Library and was honored with a Gold Library Card by the Chicago Public Library for 50 years of active service and volunteering.

In December 1961, Mrs. Holt and her family became one of the first African-American families to come together for worship as a new church called Trinity United Church of Christ. Today, Trinity is one of the largest African-American churches in the nation, best known for being President Barack Obama's former church.

Upon starting Trinity's yoga ministry in 1967, Mrs. Holt immersed herself in hatha yoga, studying first under Janice Hamilton, who needed a teacher for classes at the Chicago Park District.

She also trained under world-renowned guru Swami Vishnu-devananda, and was one of the first students at Chicago's Sivananda Yoga Vendanta Center.

After she got a teaching certificate from the Himalayan Institute, Mrs. Holt branded herself "Yoga by Lia" and began teaching across Chicago. In addition to Trinity, Mrs. Holt taught at the YMCA, the Centers for New Horizons in Bronzeville, the University of Illinois Extension Program and the Chicago Board of Education. She also led Sunrise Yoga classes on Sundays at the 63rd Street beach.

In a photo essay published in the Tribune in September 1994, Mrs. Holt, then 71, spoke about how yoga transformed her life.

"Yoga made me more self-assured. It made me calmer, healthier and a lot more self-satisfied. I do think I'm glamorous, especially for my age and the time of my life," she told the Tribune.

In 2002, at 79, the South Side grandmother was featured on the cover of Yoga Chicago magazine — with her hair braided and sitting in a lotus position — as one of the city's top instructors.

"Rosalia was such a special person — always smiling, laughing, very positive, saying kind things to strangers and giving positive words of encouragement wherever she went. She was a true yogi, and a very kind one," said Sharon Steffensen, editor of Yoga Chicago.

She was honored by the International Association of Black Yoga Teachers in 2001 for being one of the pioneers who brought yoga to Chicago.

"I've taught yoga to white people, to Indians, black people, young people, old people," Mrs. Holt said in a Chicago Defender article in 2007.

Friends said Mrs. Holt's impact was far-reaching. One of her students, Larry Turner, used Mrs. Holt's techniques to create a yoga program for children at the University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago.

She said she continued to teach yoga as a way to inspire other seniors.

"Sometimes people who are in their 50s or 60s or older see a younger yoga student or teacher and get intimidated," Mrs. Holt told Yoga Chicago in a 2005 interview. "But then they see me, and they think, 'If she can do it, I can!' "

At her death, she had still maintained a class schedule of four classes per week.